The present invention relates to photographic flash equipment and, specifically, to electronic flash equipment of the type designed for professional use.
Currently, various types of professional, high power, electronic photographic flash equipment exist. This equipment typically includes one or more independently-supported separate flash units which may be a electrically interconnected for simultaneous firing. The user can vary the light intensity on the subject by changing the type or configuration of the reflector shell used with such flash units. Also, each flash unit may include controls whereby the user can effect a limited variation in flash intensity for each unit. It is also possible to vary the number of flash units used, but this necessarily affects the light quality and intensity directed at the subject, since the light is now coming from a number of spaced-apart sources rather than from a single source.
Due to the wide variety of subject matter photographed by professional photographers, the ideal flash lighting system will be capable of rapid rearrangement of the number and configuration of flash units for desired synchronization of flash frequency and intensity. Many conventional flash units are equipped with their own power packs, and as such these units are often cumbersome as well as expensive, in that power supply components are duplicated unnecessarily.
Another disadvantage of conventional flash units which are capable of being physically connected to other like units is that they are not capable of being arranged in a sufficiently wide variety of configurations to provide the broadest possible range of lighting conditions. Conventional units are principally cylindrical and as such, are not capable of being interconnected with like units. Flash units are available which are rectangular in cross-section; however, these units are only capable of being interconnected with adjacent units along vertical or horizontal axes.
Thus, there is a need for a professional type photographic flash lighting unit which is adapted to be readily connected, physically and electrically, to like units to form a wide variety of arrays including, but not limited to vertical, horizontal, `Y`-shaped as well as circular or semi-circular arrays, to be easily connected to, or configured to operate with, many different types of conventional photographic power packs or other photographic equipment provided by various manufacturers, and to be adaptable to be used with electrical voltages supplied domestically in the United States as well as in foreign countries.